


hold onto me as we go

by goodmorningbeloved



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampires, M/M, Non linear storytelling, brief descriptions of violence, ot4 vampire flatmates tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 22:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6303004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorningbeloved/pseuds/goodmorningbeloved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are realities.</p><p>Sometimes John comes home with black and blue flowers planted firmly in his skin, head ringing, fingers numbing. Sometimes Alexander disappears and comes back, hair wind-ruffled and limbs ache-stiffened, no evidence until John kisses him and tastes copper. Sometimes it’s the other way around.</p><p>Sometimes these realities are simply correlations, not causations. Sometimes.</p><p>--</p><p>Or, John and Alexander are vampires trying to make do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold onto me as we go

**Author's Note:**

> 1) title is from phillip phillips's _home_  
>  2) the premise of this fic is based on the mockumentary _what we do in the shadows_  
>  3) this fic is a result of me realizing I WANT TO DO A VAMPIRE AU but then my brain promptly fragmenting into a million different headcanons that couldn't all make it into this one fic, so. i feel like this acts as an opening to a verse????? who knows im---  
> 4) WE JUST NEED MORE SUPERNATURAL AUS OKaY  
> 5) i typed a draft, edited the draft, lost the edited draft, and had to redo edits. i'm preeetty sure i caught most mistakes, but please let me know if there are any stubborn ones sticking around

“Have I told you about the time I was shot?” Alexander asks at the breakfast table. It is, of course, twelve minutes past eight in the evening, which means Hercules is with them but not really _with_ them, occasionally drifting back to sleep on his elbows, and Lafayette hasn’t even bothered to come out of his coffin.

John yawns around a spoonful of Lucky Charms and shakes his head, also sluggish but attentive.

So Alexander tells him about his oldest memory that isn’t wholly a memory, just a series of sensations — he describes them to John, the ripping silver-hot pain through his ribs, the dull thud of his knees, then nothing, nothing. He doesn’t remember how he woke up, so he constructs something — a blurry mess of colors, a lingering pang of pain in his side. That part is fictional, but it must have been close.

“That’s heavy,” John murmurs. Under the table, his foot bumps into Alexander’s; it’s somehow the right thing to say.

Alexander pulls the box of cereal towards him. “Isn’t it.” He feels oddly lighter.

Hercules snores.

 

 

 

 

Alexander kisses like he talks, cleverly and ardently with no signs of stopping. John keeps up somehow, winding a hand through soft black tresses, tugging every so often to remind him to slow down.

“Mmh.” Alexander is saying something, and it’s muffled until he draws back the five centimeters that John allows him to. “Losing my balance here, sweetheart.”

John’s heart positively surges at the endearment. “Aren’t you supposed to be good at multitasking,” he snipes, affectionately, and kisses Alexander again.

 

 

 

 

“They don’t think we’re weird or anything?” John asks, shifting his books to one arm so he can twine their fingers together.

“We’ll tell them you have very sensitive skin,” Alexander offers. He slows down long enough for John to get comfortable with his things again and makes sure that the umbrella covers both of them.

“I grew up in South Carolina.”

“Which is _precisely_ why you dread the sun now.”

“Ha.”

“Your freckles are skin stars. If they see the sun shining, they’ll think it’s daytime and go away permanently.”

“And how many people do you think that excuse will work on, again?” John asks. He’s ducking his head slightly, the way he does when he’s embarrassed and tries to hide in his hair, but his hair’s pulled back in a tight ponytail today, tucked in tight at the base of his neck and fully baring his pink-dusted cheeks to the world.

Alexander smiles at him like _he’s_ the world, and really, that doesn’t help the blushing.

 

 

 

 

“I’m going out,” Lafayette announces by the door.

“Bring dinner,” John calls, but between Alexander and Hercules’s shouting and the fact that Lafayette is already halfway outside the door anyway, the request goes unheard.

“You _cheated_ ,” Alexander says hotly. His knuckles are white, fingers tight around the plastic steering wheel. John rubs a socked foot against his thigh consolingly, which Alexander acknowledges by rubbing his ankle in return. John smiles into his book.

“ _I_ used a perfectly viable blue shell,” Hercules says smugly, “and you happened to be in first place—“

“Which was right where I _belonged_! I want a rematch.”

Hercules, grin still firmly in place, concedes, “Rematch it is.” As an afterthought, he tells John, “I have leftovers in the fridge.”

John makes a face. “Not looking for that kind of food tonight, but thanks,” he says.

Hercules rolls his eyes, and for a second John’s worried there’ll be a conflict, but then Alexander is tensing from his sitting position between John’s legs and maybe he and Hercules make eye contact. Hercules backs off, returns his attention to the Wii. “For the last time, Alex, I have permanent dibs on Wario—“

 

 

 

 

The sound of his coffin opening rouses him from sleep with an automatic, sleepy, “Alex?”

There’s a beat of silence. “I couldn’t sleep,” comes the answer to the unasked question. In the darkness of the room, John can just barely make out the dark ink smudges decorating Alexander’s forearm — he knows he keeps quills and inkwells for indulgence.

“C’mon,” John murmurs, shifting on his side. His eyes slide shut by their own volition, though he has enough energy to wind his arms around Alexander’s frame when the other finally fits into John’s coffin.

“Stop working so late,” John reprimands emptily into his hair.

He hears Alexander closing the lid back over them. “Sleep,” Alexander says, not an answer, but John’s body is more than willing to acquiesce.

 

 

 

 

“Sometimes you feel more familiar,” Alexander comments during one of their walks.

John glances at Alexander inquisitively. They’re only halfway to the park, and he’s been fiddling with his sketchbook the entire time. “And that means?”

“Like I’ve known you before.”

This idea settles curiously in the air.

“You can’t say you haven’t,” John finally says, because it’s true. If Alexander’s one outstanding memory is the night he was shot, John’s is a morning on a ship, feeling sickness churning in his stomach. He can only remember the most recent twenty-something; everything beyond that fades. When he looks back into his past, it’s an awful like these walks, retracing a familiar path to the lake until finally reaching the lake itself, where he can only stare out into the vast, dark expanse of things he cannot see.

“I can’t,” Alexander agrees.

“I could have been your worst enemy, and we wouldn’t know any better.”

“Is that truly the first thing you think of? Enemies?”

John shrugs. “Just a shot in the dark.”

Tomorrow, they will have been together for twenty-three years.

 

 

 

 

“Like you when you’re riled up,” John admits freely into the skin of Alexander’s neck. They’re cold to the touch, others say, pale and clammy like the stereotypes dictate, but John has always thought that Alexander’s hands are the warmest.

“Do you, now,” Alexander murmurs. He uses his free hand to brush John’s hair from his face, the other hand firmly planted by John’s head and keeping himself propped over the other. He bends down, lowering himself so their chests and thighs align, but not close enough for the pressure to be nearly as gratifying as John wants — and John _wants_.

“Alexander,” he whines, hands curling into Alexander’s waist.

“Dearest,” Alexander returns fondly. He finally, finally presses down, bringing his hips flush against John’s, and makes this slow, smooth rolling motion that sends John arching upwards. Alexander forces him back down with a rough kiss, nipping at his bottom lip until he knows it’s red and shining.

John traces the frame of him, moving his hands up the parallel lines of Alexander’s sides, over the slope of his shoulders, along the crook of his neck and finally settling at the curve of his cheeks. “Love you,” he’s sighing into the kiss, and Alexander gives and gives. John takes.

 

 

 

 

This is a memory: John not-quite-leaning against the doorway of his old room, a smile playing on his lips — in other words, looking far too spirited for someone who had just been forced to move his coffin to accommodate a total stranger. “You’ll be living with us from now on, then?”

“That appears to be the case,” Alexander saying evenly.

John eyeing the guest coffin — simple, fairly large, carved out of cherry wood — and thinking back on the others. “How long are you staying?”

Alexander dropping his bags to the floor the same way a ship drops anchor — and smiling with the slightest uptilt of his chin. “Indefinitely.”

This is a memory. 

One morning, John wakes up and doesn’t remember it — not that he immediately notices.

 

 

 

 

“You don’t like it, do you,” Alexander says, not a question. Music and party lights throb somewhere behind them; John thinks they feel far away.

“Which part?” he deflects half-heartedly.

Alexander’s lips part — maybe unconsciously — and his fangs, lethal, gleam even in the lousy lighting. “You could have said so,” he says, softly, gently. There’s red on his shirt; the woman had struggled, and John had frozen. The only guilt John feels is for the stain that will surely remain on Alexander’s shirt.

“It didn’t seem important before,” John says in earnest.

Alexander sighs, stepping away from the alcove he has pressed them into. “Come on. Let’s go home and get you something to eat.”

 

 

 

 

He’s not new to this. He knows Alexander must be older — he can tell from his eyes, from the way he speaks — but he’s not _new_ to this. He knows the unspoken rules, the unsaid requirements for living — but he doesn’t have to like them.

 

 

 

 

“Did he seriously bring _three_ girls home in the same night?” Lafayette says to the three limp bodies splayed across the couch in varying positions. He drags a hand down his face, looking exasperated.

“That appears to be the case,” Alexander says, and John’s heard that somewhere before but can’t quite place where.

 

 

 

 

“Sun’s awful this morning,” Alexander mutters. He’s paler today, the bags under his eyes darker, heavier. If John didn’t know any better he would be inclined to say it’s the sun, but he does know better.

“Come closer,” he advises, gripping the umbrella tighter.

A semester in, and students are still gawping at them — either that or rolling their eyes, as if to say, _look at them, who do they think they are, hoisting around a parasol under daylight._

“I’m really starting to think we should consider night classes,” John sighs.

“You’ll have to keep thinking about it, because it will not happen.”

“I’m just saying, it would be a lot easier if carrying an umbrella in broad daylight wasn’t so…I don’t know, outdated.”

“Who says it’s outdated?”

John’s gaze flickers to and from several students. “The entire university, I think.”

“I would like to cast the umbrella aside, incinerate myself to bits, and let the wind disperse my ashes over their prying eyeballs.”

“ _Jeepers_ , Alex.”

Alexander’s expression shifts from vindictive to besotted within seconds. “John, do you sometimes think that the reason why we’re social pariahs is not, in fact, because we carry around umbrellas, but because of your awful penchant for 70’s slang?”

“Awful? The 70’s were our last greatest years—“

“By awful, I mean _absolutely_ endearing,” Alexander says.

John smiles dopily, nudging their shoulders together. 

It’s a long walk back to the apartment.

 

 

 

 

“The hell?” John grouches, tapping furiously at his phone. “I haven’t used up all of my storage, have I?” he asks Hercules next to him, as if Hercules knows the answer.

“If the little message box says you did,” Hercules says sagely, leaning back into the couch cushions, “then you did.” There’s nothing on TV but reruns at this time of night.

“I bet it’s pictures,” John says under his breath. “What a rip-off piece of junk—“  
“To be honest, I _am_ surprised you actually hit the limit, considering Alexander doesn’t even show up in pictures.”

“Oh, sit on it,” John snaps. He can feel the tips of his ears turning red, those traitors.

Hercules chuckles, looking pleased with himself. John stands and goes off to find Lafayette’s laptop.

 

 

 

 

“You don’t have to,” John insists.

Alexander nudges the door shut with a foot, hands busy with a bottle and two wine glasses. “I want to.”

“But you _really_ don’t have to.”

“I’m serving you breakfast in bed, and you’re refusing it,” Alexander says, bemused. 

“Absolutely.” John rolls over, buries himself deeper into the comforter. He’s thinking that he should have slept in his coffin today— “Send it back to the chef, I didn’t order this.”

“It’s on the house,” Alexander’s voice lilts playfully, and John feels his mattress dip as a second weight joins him, “provided that you uncork this bottle for me.”

Alexander’s voice turns somewhat serious towards the end, and John barely stifles a giggle when he imagines Alexander pouting over a stubbornly corked wine bottle. “Two-hundred-something-year-old vampire asks area man for help uncorking a bottle of wine,” he teases. There’s the sound of clinking, and then a warm hand clasps over his shoulder, fingers lightly coaxing him to turn over. John sighs loudly and makes a show of conceding, rolling over and bouncing lightly among his pile of sheets and pillows.

“You have stronger teeth,” Alexander says with a noncommittal shrug. 

John licks his lips, then allows his tongue to swipe over his own fangs. They’re not as sharp as Alexander’s — he knows this after many bumbling attempts to hide the marks on his neck — butthey’re capable. He takes the cork between his right fang and bottom row of teeth and yanks. It comes off with a satisfying _thwop_.

“My hero,” Alexander swoons. John would have said something witty if Alexander wasn’t suddenly taking the bottle and pressing it to John’s lips. 

John keeps his lips closed, raising an eyebrow.

“Open,” Alexander says, and of course John opens his mouth, closes it around the bottle. “Don’t spill any.” Alexander tips wine into his waiting mouth, and John accepts. Alexander watches him, something dark and hungry in his eyes.

A small trickle must escape the corner of his mouth, because John feels the rivulet running down his chin.

“And you spill,” Alexander sighs, drawing the bottle away. He’s trying to be serious until his hand wavers and a few more droplets escape the bottle, splattering soundly on John’s maroon covers.

“Because you’re distracting me,” John complains through a laugh, trying to scoot away. "I just washed these sheets."

Alexander rubs the wet line away with a thumb, grinning now too, and takes a swig from the bottle himself. “Mm. I can see why you would want to live off of this for the rest of your life, but I’d rather you not.”

John watches him lazily — Alexander’s eyes are mischievous, his lips shining from the wine. He’s kicking off his shoes and clambering onto the bed, and John naturally makes room for him. “Wanna drink straight out of the bottle in front of Laf and give him an aneurysm?” he says, pushing himself up to a sitting position against the headboard.

“Laf’s French heritage,” Alexander proclaims extravagantly, making himself comfortable next to John, “does not automatically entitle him to all claims to _fine_ wine dining.”

“Do you forget that we all have uncomfortably acute hearing here,” Lafayette calls from somewhere in the house. The bathroom, maybe; John hears the slightest bit of echoing, and his voice sounds like there’s a toothbrush wedged in his mouth. 

“Never,” Alexander calls back happily.

“Wanna be even louder?” John says.

The wine glasses clink, forgotten among the covers, as Alexander curls himself around John, and when he hears Lafayette’s irritated muttering, John kisses Alexander to stifle his laughter.

 

 

 

 

This is a memory: John storming into their apartment with white hot _anger_ edging his steps, Lafayette trailing him wearily.

Alexander meeting them in the kitchen, dressed down in a loose shirt and sweatpants, almost enough to disrupt the wrath singing in John’s veins. Almost.

Alexander saying lightly, “I could have heard you from the other side of the world.”

Lafayette muttering, “It was Jefferson’s group again. I told him to leave it, but—“

John ignoring them as he rummages around the cupboards, searching for the old switchblade he used to carry around when he was new to the city— John feeling Alexander’s presence by his shoulder, silent. “Calls me _weak_ ,” he’s snarling, “nothing more than a _bedwarmer_ for you, as if I couldn’t tear his jugular without lifting my goddamn pinky—“

“John,” Alexander saying, “ _John_.” 

Finally finding the switchblade. Closing his fingers around it.

John whirling to finally face Alexander, intent clouding his vision. “We’re the better men,” him saying before Alexander can, “I know. But right now I really want to be a sixty-seven-year-old spiteful vampire who happens to have a switchblade primed for ripping tires—“

“You’ll need a lookout,” Alexander saying simply.

John staring, staring, staring.

Alexander following him out of the apartment without another word. Alexander only offering his hand to hold as they stole to the dark, and John gripping it tightly, gratefully. The _thank you_ otherwise going unheard.

This is a memory.

 

 

 

 

There are realities.

Sometimes John comes home with black and blue flowers planted firmly in his skin, head ringing, fingers numbing. Sometimes Alexander disappears and comes back, hair wind-ruffled and limbs ache-stiffened, no evidence until John kisses him and tastes copper. Sometimes it’s the other way around. 

Sometimes these realities are simply correlations, not causations. Sometimes.

 

 

 

 

John catches him looking. He almost misses it; he’s running late in picking Alexander up from his last class of the day. There are more students out — John usually tries to be one of the first to leave — but he’s starting to learn how to pay less attention to their ignorant looks.

Alexander has paused by one of the display cases, and John wonders why he’s so interested in the debate team trophies until he stops next to him and realizes how reflective the surface is.

“I’m still not used to it,” Alexander comments softly as they gaze at nothing.

“I know,” is all John can say. He can’t remember how he looks, either—one of the many things he’s forgotten. 

“We should go before someone notices.”

“Yeah?” John watches him.

Alexander nods, lets John take his hand and lead him away.

 

 

 

 

“Ready?” John says.

Alexander’s looking flustered — the first time in a while — trying to adjust his blazer and tie at the same time. There’s an awarding ceremony in half an hour, where John gets to watch Alexander beaming onstage. “I— I suppose.”

John chuckles, passing Alexander’s sketchbook and pencils before settling over his side of the couch. He draws his knees to his chest and rests his own sketchbook over his makeshift table, holding a pencil loosely. Like this, John sitting on one end of the couch and Alexander on the other, they barely fit, their ankles overlapping. 

Alexander has already lapsed into focus, eyebrows drawn together tightly as his pencil scratches over paper. John hides a smile into his sketchbook and begins, too.

He can draw Alexander’s face from memory, mostly. He knows the shape of his hairline, the deepness of his eyes, the line of his nose. It’s a little more challenging to draw the rest of his body — he keeps looking over Alexander’s clothes, trying to imagine Alexander standing. _Justice_ , John keeps telling himself, he wants to do Alexander justice. Drawing people is different from drawing wildlife; people have a dynamic that is more difficult to translate to pencil strokes, and John knows that he can spend centuries studying Alexander’s form and never come close to _capturing_.

Time flies. 

John isn’t aware of how long they’ve been sitting there until he glances up and finds Alexander staring at him. John feels his cheeks warming up.

“Are you done?” His voice rasps a little from disuse.

Alexander hums appraisingly, his eyes flickering down to his sketchbook. “I think.”

So John sets his pencil aside and presses his sketchbook to his chest. His legs ache in protest when he rearranges himself to a kneeling position on the couch, but he ignores it because Alexander is doing the same, looking eager. “Ready to put me to shame?” he asks brightly, and the only thing that stops John from launching into a lecture that _anyone can be an artist, really_ is Alexander’s sudden reveal.

“Ah,” John says delicately, and it’s all he says until Alexander snorts in laughter and John finally lets himself join in.

“Listen, I _tried_ ,” Alexander is saying, tugging John’s leg over with easy strength, “and let me explain, I didn’t get to explain.”

John quiets the last of his giggles, settling his legs over Alexander’s thighs and pretending to study him intently. “Please explain.”

“Well,” Alexander begins with mock seriousness, which nearly sends John back into a fit laughter, “here, I tried to accentuate your lovely eyes. You happened to kick my foot while I was working on the left eye, which is why it’s a little bigger than the right eye—“

“—it’s okay, no one can draw the other eye perfectly—“

“—but I really think the lips make up for it. I spent the most time on those.” Alexander pauses, tilting the sketchbook back towards him for a second. “Oh, and the hair! I spent a great deal of time on your hair too — it’s a pain to draw, by the way — and almost forgot all about the rest of your body.”

John snickers, and Alexander pinches him on the thigh for his troubles. 

“Let’s see yours, then.”

John passes his sketchbook over wordlessly and leans back against the armrest. 

Lafayette and Hercules are both out today — the apartment is quiet, quieter still as Alexander rubs John’s knee idly, his other hand tracing sketch lines on paper.

“You make me look…” Alexander trails off. “I don’t know how to finish that sentence without sounding narcissistic in an attempt to compliment you.”

“Beautiful,” John finishes for him. “Of course. It’s a portrait.” He presses his cheek against the cushion, smiling in self satisfaction.

“Come here.”

Alexander pulls on his legs with an easy strength, and John inches closer until he’s practically sitting sideways on Alexander’s thighs. When Alexander kisses him, it’s slow and sweet.

“Love you,” one of them murmurs into the kiss. John’s not sure who says it first, but he _is_ sure of the “I love you too” that follows.

They end up ten minutes late to the ceremony.

 

 

 

 

If John was once afraid of small, enclosed spaces, he doesn’t remember. It helps, though, that Alexander’s coffin is a little bigger than his, with ample space for John’s legs to stretch and tangle with Alexander’s.

He yawns as Alexander cards a hand through his hair leisurely, unhurriedly. “How long are you staying?” John feels a twinge of familiarity.

“As long as you want me to,” Alexander says, and the familiarity ends there. 

"Until morning?" John asks of him. He means midnight, of course; it's been some time since he has thought about the peculiarity of that statement.

He feels Alexander smile against his cheek. "Of course."

Content, John burrows closer into Alexander’s side and presses one last kiss to his collarbone. There's no rush.


End file.
